New Brunswick has the perfect climate for growing premium quality apples, and demand is so high, that they will be producing even more of the popular fruit in the coming year.
Chair of the New Brunswick Apple Growers Association Andrew Lovell says they released good news in their strategic plan this week, “Calls to increase the production of apples by a thousand new acres of trees that will hopefully turn out to be $25 million in investment by farmers, and the return will be significant, with hundreds of new jobs.”
The trees will be grown at several different orchards across the province.
Lovell says they would like to form a partnership with other provinces in Atlantic Canada for apple growers, “We’re sure we can increase jobs in the Atlantic region by 600 jobs, with the potential for a new packing facility and export, either bring that money from other regions into our province because we need it. We need a good news story here.”
Lovell says Atlantic Canada grows some of the best honeycrisp apples in the world, “The honeycrisp market is not even close to being filled so there’s a niche that we can fill. We have opportunities that other regions don’t have because of our climate. We can store them longer, we get higher sugar content, , we get better colour and it just makes our apples very marketable and very sought after.”
